In general, a high hardness stainless steel is used in producing a razor blade so as to secure corrosion resistance and machinability at the same time. The stainless steel is a stainless steel that mainly contains 12% or more chromium and 0.6% or more carbon. The stainless steel secures high hardness by employing carbon after final heat-treatment, and secures corrosion resistance in a wet environment due to the influence of chromium contained in a base material. Conventionally, there was known a method for producing steel for razor blade, by adding, to the steel, carbon having a content of 0.65 to 0.7% and chromium having a content of 12.7 to 13.7%. However, when the steel is produced with the composition described above, carbide formed inside the material is not completely employed in a heat treatment process, and therefore, a chromium-deficient layer is formed, thereby lowering the corrosion resistance of the material. As the material is exposed to a wet environment such as a bathroom for a long period of time, the surface of a razor blade is corroded, and therefore, rust occurs in the surface of the razor blade.
In order to solve such a problem, the content of carbon is limited to 0.45 to 0.55%, and molybdenum is added to the material, so that it is possible to prevent the occurrence of carbide remaining in the finally heat-treated material and to improve the corrosion resistance of the base material. However, such steel contains high silicon in order to prevent the lowering of hardness due to the reduction in carbon. In the steel containing high silicon, the hardness of a hot-rolled annealed material increases, and therefore, it is not easy to produce the steel using a production process of general stainless steel.